17. Name: Timo Taussi Title: Crusades, Rebels and Campaigning: News as a Cultural Story and Identifier in a Globalizing News World (A Comparison
between Al Jazeera and CNN) Institution: University of Helsinki Country: Finland Date: 2006 Language: Finnish Abstract:
This thesis deals with the relationship between news coverage and culture. With globalization and technological developments, world events come to the attention of people in real time. In this context, international news organizations play a major role in shaping people’s perceptions of world events. The subject of this research is the coverage of the same event by two international news channels, Al Jazeera and CNN. Focusing on the relationship between news coverage and culture, the study seeks to understand how culture, with its different ideologies, affects the perspective of news and the way they are reported. It also investigates the impact of this perspective on the cultural identification of news-consuming audiences as well as their opinions and attitudes towards other cultures. The analysis shows that news organizations from different cultures have different views on the topics they cover. Although they try to report events as they happen, they always emphasize cultural based views. While CNN as a western news network describes groups fighting Americans in Iraq as “rebels,” the Arab news network Al Jazeera describes them as “groups campaigning against the U.S. invasion”.
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